Stuffed Animals and Cacti
by C.T Saiyukily Twisted
Summary: Naruto stumbles upon Gaara's quirks and habits and teasing ensues, and both realize that even without their bijuus as their common ground, they are more similar than they think. Set at the end of the Kazekage Rescue arc.


I was highly disappointed that I could not find any fic that focused on Gaara's funny cultivating cacti habit which I read about in Narutopedia, so this fic is a result of it. While reading it, it struck me as a habit that is so HIM. Once he gets his mind set on something, he'll go through with it, from trying to find love as a kid to proving his existence through murder and finally going back to his original childhood dream of finding acceptance after meeting Naruto. For some reason, his bear decided to come into it as well. To be honest, for all his cool, calm and confident demeanor, I feel that Gaara can be such a sentimental sap. Seriously, after three years and he's still going on about what Naruto did for him? He declared it in a SPEECH in front of hordes of shinobi. I am so sure he kept that teddy bear of his.

Disclaimer: Only Gaara's cacti belong to me.

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_The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." - C.S Lewis_

Gaara sat on his bed, staring at the wall. He had been forbidden from his Kazekage duties for a couple of days, and was feeling particularly aimless, like a workaholic on vacation.

_Gaara, you just came back from the dead_, Temari says, with an edge of sisterly annoyance in her voice. _Kankurou and I as well as the council can handle the country's issues for a few days._ _For now, please try to rest. _She throws in a glare for good measure, with the words 'or else' hanging silently in the air.

Gaara doesn't argue.

It was a strange feeling, he thought, with Shukaku no longer inside him. It was stranger still, waking up to Naruto's smile, the cheering of the villagers, Kankurou's snark and Temari's fussing, and to the realisation of Chiyo-baasan's sacrifice.

Gaara hasn't felt like _this_ in a long time. His uncle's words come to his mind again. _There's only one thing that can heal a heart, only one. _

_It's love._

His uncle's words never fail to give him a silent painful pang in the chest; but now, that silent pang no longer resembles a huge, giant knife stab to the heart. It's as if – since the time during the Chuunin Exams – a gentle, warm padding has slowly enveloped his heart, protecting it against terrible memories and dark thoughts. Gaara tries searching for a word in his mind that could describe the depth of what he feels, and fails.

He picks up his old teddy bear hidden at the dark corner of his bed and continues pondering at it, willing it to come up with a word for what he felt. When that failed to work as well, he walked over to the balcony that held a great assortment of cacti and began to work.

After he had returned home from Konoha, he had decided to learn what it was like to love others by beginning to learn how to care for plants first. Cacti were an easy point to start with; they were hardy, independent and easy to take care of. Sure, they were prickly and one had to be careful while handling them, but that wasn't really much of a problem for Gaara. He didn't need to bother with gloves either. He liked how though they looked so prickly and so unapproachable, they produced the most surprisingly delicately beautiful flowers even in the harsh weather of Suna. When they bloomed, Gaara felt a quiet sense of satisfaction, and working at his cacti kept him sane when Shukaku was being particularly difficult.

His quiet work is interrupted by a knock at the door.

He slowly gets up and opens the door, to be greeted by a familiar grin. 'Temari and Kankurou sent me to see if you were properly resting and not secretly doing any work,' Naruto says. 'They don't trust you much, eh? Can I come in?'

Gaara silently lets him in, and goes to wash his hands and make a cup of tea for his friend. Naruto looks around Gaara's room. It is bare, with no pictures or posters hanging on the walls. Even his bed looks lonely and rarely used. Then it strikes Naruto as a stupid thought, since it was only until recently that Gaara needed sleep. He wonders how Gaara feels about the feeling of undisturbed sleep, until his eye catches something of great interest on Gaara's bed.

Gaara puts the two cups of tea on the tray, with a sudden sense of unease. He initially puts it down to the food that Temari had cooked for him earlier, until Naruto comes in with the most shit-eating grin one could muster.

In a second, Gaara finds his old teddy bear in his face and with Naruto whining in a well-practised falsetto. 'Gaara-_chaaaan_! Why didn't you make a cup for me too!'

Gaara places the two cups of tea on the dining table, and ignores Naruto. Naruto is not easily put off by ignores and silences.

'Gaara-chaaaan! Why are you ignoring me! I'm so hurt! All I asked for was a cup of tea!' Naruto continues whining through his teddy bear, before he switches back to his original voice, 'Yeah Gaara! Don't be mean to Ai-chan! Give her something to drink!'

Gaara twitches at Naruto's name for his teddy bear, but smoothly replies, 'Alright, Naruto. Does Gama-chan want something to drink too?'

Naruto sputters indignantly, right on cue. Gaara silently congratulates himself on the good and effective usage of information. 'How do you know about Gama-chan?' Naruto demands, stuffing his hand into his pocket where Gaara suspected he was keeping his frog purse.

'I overheard you talking to it while you were on the way to the ramen bar with Haruno-san.'

'But you weren't there!'

'I was on my balcony. I have good hearing. Not as good as yours, but still good.'

Naruto scowls at him, but takes out Gama-chan and places him next to Gaara's teddy bear. 'So, what's Ai-chan's real name?'

'It doesn't have one.'

'You didn't name Ai-chan?'

'No.'

'Then how did you talk to her?'

'_Her?'_ Gaara thinks. Nonetheless, he goes along with Naruto's assigned gender. 'I didn't talk to her. Not when I was a kid. Not really.'

Naruto blinks at him. 'How old is she?'

'I had her since I was 3.'

'Wow. That's real old. Older than Gama-chan, I think.' He grins, and squeezes his frog wallet affectionately. 'Why didn't you talk to her? I thought it was a natural thing for all kids to do. A stuffed toy is more interesting only if you can talk to it.'

Gaara pauses. 'I didn't think about it. She was soft, she was nice to hug. It was good enough for me.'

Naruto gives him another one of his gentle smiles. 'She was comforting, huh?'

'Yes.'

'Gama-chan too. Gave me somebody to squeeze and hug when I was alone.' Naruto turns to look at his frog. 'He's been through with me a lot, right, Gama-chan?' Naruto accidentally lapses into his stuffed animal talk. Gaara can almost imagine a young Naruto talking to it everyday. He snorts softly.

Naruto scowls at him again. 'You're laughing!'

'Naruto, I don't laugh.'

'Yes you do. Your eyes say it all!'

Gaara can't argue with that, so he sips his tea nonchalantly.

Naruto frowns at him, but after a while he starts grinning again and picks Ai-chan up. 'But still, I can't believe somebody like you would purposely keep a childhood toy. I mean, you seem to cool for that.' Naruto grin grows wider. 'Ne, Ai-chan?'

Gaara snorts again. 'I'm not cool.'

'Pah. You're avoiding the subject again.'

Gaara sips his tea again. 'I didn't purposely keep Ai-chan. I lost her after…' _My uncle tried to kill me, _he doesn't say. He blocks out the thought of his uncle with bombs on his shirt, and doesn't finish the sentence. Naruto looks on with a sudden flash of worry, and says soothingly, 'Hey, it's okay. You don't need to tell me if you don't want to.' Gaara must have had a rather painful expression on his face. He quickly smoothens out his face again. 'No, it's fine. Anyway, I didn't try to find her. I didn't really care. I found her somewhere in my room while I was spring-cleaning a few months after the Chuunin exams.' Gaara stares into his cup.

'It was like she knew how… broken I was, and hid away until I became alright again.'

Naruto holds Ai-chan and Gama-chan together, side by side. 'Well, now that you're Kazekage, I'm sure she'll never see the need to hide away from you!' He laughs. 'I bet she's even feeling jealous of all the attention all those other girls are showering on you!'

Gaara looks at Naruto. 'Thank you, Naruto.'

Naruto grins. 'I'm just stating a fact. Man, if only you could see how all those girls tried to swarm you! They knocked me aside trying to get to you!'

Gaara doesn't bother clarifying his previous comment, but continues drinking his tea and listens to Naruto ramble on about his supposed fan base, and grunts and snorts every once in a while. After a few minutes they lapse into a companionable silence, sipping their tea. When they finish their tea, Gaara brings the cups back into the sink, collecting the precious water in a basin before he washes them. Naruto watches him, and helps him wash the cup he drank from.

Naruto remains quiet for a moment while they wash, but breaks the silence. 'Ne, Gaara?'

'Hn?'

'Just now, I noticed. Why were your hands slightly dirty? I mean, when you came to answer the door.'

'Oh. I forgot to wash my hands after working on my cacti.' Gaara pauses. 'I think I need to clean my door knob.'

He doesn't see Naruto's eyes widening in great surprise. 'Gaara grows CACTI? I mean, I understand why cacti, seeing that it IS the desert and all, but you GROWING cacti? The stoic, cool, Kazekage growing cacti?' Naruto would have liked to continue, but he was laughing too hard to do so.

Gaara glares at him, resisting the urge to dump the bowl of water over Naruto. He didn't want to waste water and clean up a big mess later. 'Why not?'

Naruto wipes the tears out of his eyes. 'Nah, I'm not saying you can't, Gaara. It just… didn't strike me as something you would do as a hobby. More of something _I_ would do, actually. I mean, if I lived in the desert and everything.' He turns back to Gaara and flashes his biggest smile. 'I like watering plants!'

Gaara frowns at Naruto.

'Aw, c'mon Gaara! I really didn't mean to make fun of you!' Naruto whines. 'Show me your cacti? Please?'

Gaara twitches but eventually relents and leads him to the balcony, with Naruto following behind. When he arrives and sees Gaara's great cacti collection, Naruto stops and stares in awe.

'Wow. When you said worked on cacti, I didn't imagine THIS many cacti.' Naruto says, his eyes scanning the vast collection that Gaara keeps on his balcony. 'This probably takes like LOADS of time and effort. Where do you find the time?'

'Until recently, I haven't been sleeping at night.' Gaara says. Naruto, thankfully, gets it quickly.

'So what are you going to do now? I mean, since you sleep at night, and you have Kazekage duties in the morning, when are you going to find the time to take care of them?'

'I'll find the time.' Gaara says determinedly. Then he thinks for a while. 'Also, there are people here who are good with plants. They can help me with them.'

'Heh. But nobody can be as good as you, eh?'

'Hn.'

'Admit it, Gaara! That's what you were thinking!'

'Maybe.'

Naruto laughs. Gaara lets out an almost-smile. Nobody in this world can stand up to that smile and laugh, Gaara thinks. Before long, Naruto is grabbing Gaara's arm and dragging him all over the balcony.

'What's the name of this? It's kind of cute! I like it!'

'It's an orange gymnocalycium mihanovichii.'

Naruto stares at him blankly.

'A chin cactus.'

'Well now, that makes more sense. Heh, even the name is kind of cute!' Naruto rubs his chin. 'Can you imagine if I grew a beard as prickly as that?' Naruto starts looking around again.

'How about this one? Man, it's mighty tall. And it looks like a person!' Naruto stretches his arms upwards, imitating it.

'It's a saguaro cactus. It has a really long lifespan. This one is easily about 35 years old already, but that's not even its full lifespan. Its complete lifespan is easily about 70 years.' Gaara pauses, and slowly plucks the fruit off the cactus with his sand. 'The fruit is pretty good too.'

Naruto blinks. 'Cacti produce FRUIT?'

Gaara stares at him. 'It's a plant, Naruto. Plants usually have a tendency to produce fruit, as part of the reproductive cycle.' He gets a knife and 2 spoons from his kitchen, and cuts it open, and gives one half to Naruto. 'Try it. It's good.'

Naruto examines the intensely-coloured flesh within the fruit. He takes a bite suspiciously at first, but realises that it tastes great, and swallows it down. His mouth is smeared with the redness of the fruit.

'Hey, it is pretty good! Tastes a little like raspberries.' Naruto wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and Gaara twitches again. He goes off to get a tissue for Naruto, who accepts it sheepishly. 'Heh, who knew that cacti could produce fruit! I always thought they remained like that, with neither flowers nor fruit and reproduced by… I don't know.' Naruto frowns. 'Come to think of it, I hardly see and cacti with flowers, so how do they get fruit in the first place?'

'Cacti do flower. They just don't flower very often, like maybe once a year, and when they do, it's usually at night.' Gaara pulls Naruto over to a rather unique-looking star-shaped cactus, with a flower on top. Naruto's eyes light up in childish curiosity, as he pokes the cactus and the flower and smells it.

'Heh! Cacti are so interesting! This one is even in the shape of a star! It's kinda like a plant-version of a starfish.' He pokes it again, carefully, just in case there were tiny hidden spines. 'What's this one called?'

'Astrophytum myriostigma.' Gaara says, forgetting Naruto's incapability to comprehend long names for a moment. Naruto pulls him a face, and Gaara quickly corrects himself. 'It's a Bishop's Cap.'

'Heh, another funny name again! Why don't you just call the cacti by those names? They sound so much better than that astropipi-gobbledegook stuff.' Naruto sniffs at it. 'Who knew such prickly and strange-looking things could produce such pretty and nice smelling flowers! Though this one doesn't have any spines. But it still looks very much like a cactus.' He rubs his finger down its waxy surface. 'Only a cactus could look so different and funny-looking.'

He looks up at Gaara. 'So, which one is your favourite?'

Gaara thinks. 'I like them all.'

'Psssht. That doesn't count. You've got to have a favourite.'

Gaara considers carefully, and leads Naruto to a cactus that looks like any other boring old cactus, but with a long, huge bud growing from it. 'This one.'

'This one?'

'Yes.' Gaara feels a mild excitement after examining the bud; its size meant that it was really close to flowering.

Naruto looks at it and tries to see the beauty of it for the sake of not deflating Gaara's apparent excitement. 'Well, that's one big bud.'

'It is. It's close to flowering soon. It's called selenicereus grandiflorus, or the large-flowered cactus, sweet-scented cactus, night-blooming cereus, or usually more commonly known as the lady of the night.' Gaara forgets himself and starts to find himself rambling like Naruto.

Naruto grins at Gaara, mildly amused. 'Lady of the night? That's a nice name. Why's it called that?'

'Because it blooms only once a year, for only a few hours at night. When the sun rises, the flower dies and will never bloom again. It has one of the most beautiful flowers of all the cacti, I think.' Gaara touches the bud. 'And that it blooms only at night, when people are asleep, makes it even more of a joy if you manage to catch it flowering. I managed to do so, last year. It should be blooming tonight.' Gaara lets go of the bud.

Naruto grabs his shoulder. 'Well, let's watch it bloom together!'

Gaara sighs. 'I promised Temari to rest.'

Naruto whistles. 'Hey, we can rest now! We can just sit here on the balcony! Come on, once a year for a few hours at night? When do you think you will have the time to stay up to watch it bloom now? Heck, I might never have a chance to see it again for the rest of my life!' Naruto ends dramatically. 'Temari can't fault you if you tell her that I forced you to stay up too, right?' He grins cheekily.

Gaara starts carefully weighing the benefits and costs of such an action, and finally comes to a decision. 'Yes, I guess she can't. And you're going back tomorrow anyway. Alright, let's watch it bloom together.' He fetches two chairs, and they sit down. 'The sun is setting soon,' Gaara says, quietly. 'Hopefully, it won't be too long before the flower blooms.'

Naruto smiles. 'Today, I found out a lot of interesting things.'

'Hn?'

'That Gaara likes cacti and still keeps his teddy bear.' Naruto grins, rubbing his nose. 'Now I won't feel so embarrassed about keeping Gama-chan and my houseplants when I become Hokage.'

Gaara looks at Naruto. 'Why do you like watering plants, Naruto?'

Naruto furrows his eyebrows as he thinks. 'Well, it's because I feel responsible for something, you know? Like… somebody needs me. I think. Erm. I just like watering them, I suppose. You get what I'm saying?'

Gaara gets it. Completely. 'Yes. Yes, I do.'

Naruto looks at Gaara and starts smiling again. 'You know something, I realised Gaara is kind of like a cactus. You look kind of unapproachable at first, but you're actually a very unique and interesting person.' Naruto grins. 'S'that why you like growing cacti?'

'Hn. That's your own reasoning. I don't bloom with flowers or produce fruit, Naruto.'

'Heh. Well, I guess you're right. Hey, could I bring home one of those orange chin cacti of yours? It's easy to take care of, right?'

'Sure. And yes, it's easy to maintain. I'll tell you how to take care of it properly later.'

'Alright! I'll make sure it's well-watered, well-cared for and well-loved, don't you worry!'

_Well-loved. _Hm. Yes. The feeling of being well-loved and well-cared for. 'Don't over-water it. ' Gaara warns, as they lapse back into a comfortable silence again. Naruto goes and gets Gama-chan and Ai-chan, and places them together on the ledge, and grins at Gaara. _So they won't feel left out_, his smile says.

And as the sun goes down, two good friends wait for the darkness to come when the cactus blooms in its full glory, once a year, for only a few hours, spreading its sweet scent generously and invitingly over the land of Suna, with their fellow stuffed animals sitting comfortably next to each other, together.

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A/N: In conclusion, Gaara has the potential to be an obsessive-compulsive sentimental sap. Just like Naruto. Hence the reason why they are my favourite characters.


End file.
